Incorporating ethics into infectious disease clinical practice guidelines

Area of Science:

• Medical Ethics
• Infectious Diseases
• Clinical Practice Guidelines

Background:

• Incorporating ethics into clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) presents challenges, especially for infectious diseases (ID) due to complex ethical considerations and diverse at-risk populations.
• The European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases initiated the OPENING project to address this gap.

Purpose of the Study:

• To generate guidelines for the systematic inclusion of ethics principles into ID CPGs.
• To review existing literature and guidance on ethics in CPGs.

Main Methods:

• Conducted a scoping review of articles (1990-2024) on ethics inclusion in CPGs.
• Reviewed guidance documents from international societies on incorporating ethics.
• Outlined the inclusion of main ethics principles in ID CPGs based on findings.

Main Results:

• Retrieved 21 articles (1994-2024), none specifically focused on infectious disease ethics (IDE).
• Key themes included equity principles, consideration of subgroups, and patient involvement in CPG development.
• A structured framework for systematic IDE principle inclusion was proposed.

Conclusions:

• There is a notable lack of recommendations for incorporating ethics into ID CPGs.
• Scientific societies must develop and integrate ethics guidelines into ID CPGs to fill this critical gap.